Abi & Izzy - the next 5 years

It's been one of those evenings where we realised too late that we hadn't got our act together on the school admin on Friday night. Cue much frustration and last minute washing... Abi had been selected for the local schools Under 11s Netball tournament and so of course we thought (she thought) it would be sensible to tie that into having 2 friends for a sleepover "so their Mums didn't have to get up early the following day". This meant a chaotic houseful after school, added to by Izzy going to Tavie's straight from school so they could go to gym club together. Glenn picked her up at 6:30pm and forgot to get her stuff out of the car... and so it is that he's doing the ironing now at nearly 10pm. When do the kids start to think about this for themselves?? The rest of the weekend has been pretty relaxed. The tournament was actually quite good fun - basically a reunion of people we know from St Gabriel's, swimming lessons and the village. The ki...

What an interesting week. We've had highs and lows as we embarked on a big conversation about the future, but after some soul searching and silence we have found our way to a plan which seems to be good for all. The discussion of last week - should we stay or should we go now - made it obvious that while I might be ready to throw everything up in the air and caution to the wind, the rest of the family are (thankfully) a bit more cautious. Glenn and I tiptoed around the discussion until Friday when we sat down and had a proper chat about what the future plan should be. My plan B was a 3 year idea which combines the kids being able to finish Thorngrove, us having more time to enjoy what we've done here, enough time to save up the bulk of the kids senior school fees and time for Glenn to find us the perfect property in the SW which reduces our mortgage to next to nothing. Perfect! We've even found a lovely coeducational independent school which, on paper admittedly, looks v...

Wet Sundays are always a bit of a danger zone for us - who knows what conversations can take hold? It's on a wet Sunday we decided to 'just look' at another dog and Bertie arrived within the week. It was also on a wet Sunday we talked about a new friend for Bertie for when Scooby was gone...and very nearly came home with Nigel (the English Bulldog / mahoosive great big bull in a China shop dog). So today was wet and windy and a conversation which has been circling around the house just a little took hold and took a life of its own - be warned! Every time we get The Week there is at least one amazing property, normally in Yorkshire, generally about half the value of ours and equally as nice. Every week Glenn shows it to me and comments on what a bargain you can get up North. Every week I think the same "if we did that I could escape the rat race and we could live a different life, a slightly slower life which doesn't leave me exhausted by Thursday and crawling t...